MBA

Being able to meet new people, expand your connections, and build personal rapport is a key element in business today. But anyone who struggles with balancing career and family knows well the challenge of finding time for networking.

... Estelle Metayer (@Competia) is the principal and founder of Competia, a leadership and strategy consulting firm, and is an adjunct professor with McGill University’s leadership business programs.

The website of the World Retail Congress, which just concluded its annual confab in France, asks “Why Paris in 2014?”

Why, indeed, British retail CEO Andy Street might have asked. The chief of department store chain John Lewis made his way to the conference last week to receive the award for Best Omnichannel Retailer (No, we don’t know what that means, either).

It has been a journey of nearly a decade and it’s not over yet, but for Alexandra Schwartz, starting her own business lets her Breathe.

... Ms. Schwartz made her move into her own business after working for a dozen years as a manager and buyer for Italian designer Gianni Versace, then getting her MBA at McGill University in Montreal. After that, she moved to Los Angeles to work at American Apparel’s headquarters.

The Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management (MDIIM)’s mandate is to address complex, systemic challenges through an integrative approach to management. Such an approach breaks down disciplinary barriers, embraces multiple perspectives and encourages holistic, context-sensitive thinking about organizations. Integrated management constructively faces the tensions of different perspectives on value to enact strategies that transcend rather than accept trade-offs.

Sam Sadeghi’s career seems to be on a trajectory that only goes up. The electrical engineer has been working full-time in his field since graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Ryerson University in 2004. He continued to work full-time while pursuing a master’s in power electronics, which he earned from Ryerson in 2008. The only time he didn’t work was when he took a four-month leave in 2009 to take core courses for his master’s in business administration at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The economy has changed dramatically in the 30 years since Doug Bergeron first entered the work force and, of course, Bergeron, 53, has changed with it. Best known for leading the group that purchased the credit- and debit-card terminal makerVeriFone from Hewlett-Packard for $50 million in 2001, as CEO, he transformed it into a multinational, multi-billion-dollar company.

Mid-September: the time when universities and communities across Canada and the United States lick their wounds after yet another terrible Frosh (Freshman Orientation) season. Inappropriate behaviour, drunkenness, unruly young men and women terrorizing their neighbours, hospitalization, assaults — the tally is not for the faint of heart. We sometimes think of Frosh as we do of winter in Canada: one can only endure it.